ROI and Business Case

[YourCompany.com] · Customer Support Department · Prepared by FullSpec · [Today's Date]

This document gives you a clear, numbers-first view of what your current returns process is costing, what changes once automation is live, and exactly how long it takes to recover the investment. The figures are drawn from your confirmed process data, benchmarked against comparable businesses in the FullSpec system, and held constant throughout so every number ties back to the same source. You do not need to calculate anything here: FullSpec has done that work. Your job is to review the assumptions in section 06 and flag anything that needs adjusting before build begins.

01What the current process is costing you

The three highest-friction steps in your current process are listed below. Each one contributes directly to the total time cost above and introduces its own category of failure.

• Step 3: Check Return Policy Eligibility (7 minutes per request). Agents compare order dates and item categories against a shared Google Doc or from memory. Because there is no enforced rule set, decisions vary by agent and shift. Failure mode: inconsistent approvals and rejections that generate customer disputes and supervisor escalations.
• Step 7: Log Refund in Xero (8 minutes per request). The agent manually creates a credit note in Xero, matching it to the correct customer and invoice by hand. Failure mode: frequent data-entry errors and mismatched records that finance must locate and correct at month-end, adding invisible overhead.
• Steps 1 and 2 combined: Receive, Log, and Locate the Order (14 minutes per request). The agent reads the inbound request, creates the Zendesk ticket, opens Shopify, and searches for the order manually before any decision is made. Failure mode: duplicate tickets, missed requests during volume spikes, and an immediate queue build-up that pushes resolution time past two days.

02What changes after automation

Once the automation is live, the Returns Triage Agent handles ticket intake, order lookup, and policy eligibility checking automatically the moment a new Zendesk ticket arrives. The Refund Execution Agent then sends the customer confirmation, processes the Shopify refund, creates the Xero credit note, and closes the ticket without any agent involvement for standard in-policy cases. The one decision point that stays with your team is the discretionary review of out-of-policy or disputed requests: those are routed to a support lead before any refund is issued, keeping a human in control of the calls that carry financial and customer-relationship risk. Everything else runs without anyone touching it.

03Before and after comparison

04Tool costs

05Net ROI summary

06Assumptions log

All figures in this document are based on current volume of approximately 120 return requests per month and a loaded hourly rate of $36. If either of those inputs changes, the savings scale proportionally. At 200 requests per month, the annual staff saving rises to around $24,960 and payback shortens to approximately two and a half months. At a higher hourly rate of $45, the same volume produces a gross annual saving of around $21,060. Conversely, if volume drops below 60 requests per month, the payback period extends to approximately eight months but the automation remains cost-positive in year 1. FullSpec can re-run these numbers with your actual figures at any point before or after build. Contact the team at support@gofullspec.com if you want a revised scenario run before committing.